As the Internet becomes a more reliable and accepted transmission medium, it can be used for all types of information interchange.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,546--Reisman describes a system for mass distribution by electronic transmission of information, such as periodicals. Using a current customer manifest, the server automates transmission of current issues and updates of the periodical information, and verifies with the customer that the transmission has been received in its entirety. Updating the customer's records can be totally automatic, or, as discussed in a preferred embodiment example in the patent, the customer's system clock can be monitored, and the customer alerted to the arrival of an update release date so that the customer can confirm that the system should seek and fetch the scheduled update, if available.
Another use of electronic transmission is for filing information to meet time deadlines. It is this use to which the present invention is directed.
An example of time-sensitive filing is commercial tenders. An invitation to tender electronically is usually not different from more traditional formats; a non-extendible submission deadline is set for receipt of sealed bids, and only those tenders filed by the deadline are considered.
Other examples of time-sensitive information submissions include:
applications for enrollment, PA1 submission of educational assignments and examinations, PA1 comments in response to requests for proposals, and PA1 purchase orders that must be received before expiry of a fiscal period.
By using electronic transmission to send information that is time-sensitive (as well as non-time sensitive information), the user is able to transmit, with certainty, the required information over a great distance in a short time, usually not exceeding a few hours. Compression technology permits lengthy documents to be sent. Encryption technology provides security where the information transmitted electronically is commercially sensitive or confidential.
Where the filing of a submission must meet a time limit or deadline, the receiving server cannot rely on the submitter's clock for controlling the submission gate because it is impossible to ensure the accuracy of the sender's clock, and, in a competitive situation, it is impossible to synchronize the clocks of all senders to ensure fairness.
However, the submitter usually wants to know as soon as possible whether a submission has met the time limit and been accepted for filing. There are a number of alternate techniques, known in the art, to try to return this type of information to the sender.
One technique is to enable the submitting application to try to check the date on-the-fly, while the submitter is still connected. However, this can be an expensive solution, particularly if database access is involved.
Another solution is to have the receiving processor check the submission at "submission time" to determine whether the document is on time, and to return a message to the submitter as soon as the check is complete. Implementing this solution requires that the processor receiving submissions filed to meet a deadline, have an active agent to respond to each submission at the time that document arrives. It is difficult to implement this technique universally because:
1. Some environments do not readily provide an active agent to immediately process documents on arrival; and
2. Some servers may not have the processing capability required for the actions of active agents, particularly where an invitation to tender is available to a wide constituency. As the deadline drew near, the volume of documents arriving could be huge. A scheme that requires active processing and checking of the arriving documents around that time would require corresponding "huge" performance from the processor. If the processor was able to process and respond on only some submissions, then the system would be unfair to submitters of those submissions that were missed by the processor.
If, in the above scheme, the receiving processor merely received and time stamped all documents for later checking for compliance with the deadline, the processing performance problem would be addressed, but no immediate feedback (deadline verification) would be provided to the submitter.
Another technique is to disable the receiving mechanism when the deadline arrives. However, this is extremely complex to implement because at the deadline time, there could be a huge backlog of files at different states and at different queues inside the system; some files being received, some awaiting "connection open", etc. The system may not have a clean way of allowing the receiving application to chop off a queue. If disabling the receiving mechanism must wait until all queues are clear, the waiting time could be very unpredictable as files kept coming in to re-fill the queues. The deadline would lose its definition, and would not be the same for all submissions.
Another alternative is to require a positive two-way handshake process between sender and receiver before the submitting program begins to file the submission, such as described in the above-referenced U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,546. As described in the patent, the protocol used for the handshaking is relatively complex; it identifies the customer's transporter client system to the remote server (that will issue the periodical information) by product ID and user ID, and a password or other authentication code for the transporter log file. This technique also requires an active agent on the receiver side, so that the performance problems discussed above associated with active agents at deadline time could result in added problems if processor performance prevented establishing the handshake, so that the submitting program could not make the submission at all.
It would be preferable to have a solution that did not depend on an active agent, such as discussed above, so that there would be no processing required for the documents when they arrive. Processing could then be scheduled and smoothed out, and the performance issue associated with the deadline in large bids would be alleviated. Yet, it is still desirable that a submitter has instant feedback about the result, that is, whether the submission has been accepted for filing within the time limit.